NYC Drivers Seek Way to Avoid New Tolls

As toll hikes took effect Sunday on bridges and tunnels between New York and New Jersey, drivers complained they would look for alternate routes to save money. But there appeared to be little they could do to escape higher costs except stay home.

Mike Simone, who lives in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, said he would look for other ways to get to New Jersey to visit friends three times a week, including the PATH train.

But, he said as he filled up his Chrysler at a Jersey City gas station, “it’s going to be a crapshoot depending on how many times I’m here that week…It adds up if I do this three or four times per week. It will be a slight strain on me financially.”

But experts said the higher tolls on the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and George Washington Bridge probably won’t lead to a fall-off in traffic. Fares rose to $9.50 from $8 for those paying with E-ZPass at peak periods and to $12 from $8 for those paying with cash. Unlike the East River, where some crossings are free and others tolled, drivers must pay the same price to cross each of the Hudson River bridges and tunnels.

“There’ll be an awful lot of grumbling,” said Raymond Tillman, a tolling consultant. “But not a lot of people will change their habits because the options are limited.”

It’s the third time tolls on Port Authority of New York and New Jersey crossings have risen in the past 10 years. The Port Authority, which is controlled by the governors of New York and New Jersey, says it needs the extra revenue to pay for maintaining infrastructure and building the World Trade Center.

The New York chapter of AAA is considering suing the Port Authority over the increase. The drivers’ group says using toll money to pay for nontransportation projects such as the World Trade Center violates a provision in federal law requiring tolls to be “just and reasonable.”

Some drivers said the new tolls would push them to take mass transit.

Adele Grodstein, a graphic designer from Haworth, N.J., said she might take the bus more often instead of driving her black Subaru Forester over the George Washington Bridge to visit her son.

“I’ll take the subway, too. Get a MetroCard to go with my E-ZPass,” she said.

But fares for the Port Authority-controlled PATH Rail also rose 25 cents Sunday, to $2, and will keep rising for the next three years.

Tolls will continue to climb in coming years. They’ll go up 75 cents each year until 2015. Drivers without E-ZPass tags will pay $2 more, rounded up to the next dollar.

John Knudson was resigned to the new tolls. The Rangers season-ticket holder said he travels from his Staten Island home over the Bayonne Bridge and Holland Tunnel twice a week during hockey season. The 50-year-old teacher said he is sick of “gas, all the toll hikes, everything that goes along with it and I don’t really see anything for my money.”